Method of searching text to find relevant content and presenting advertisements to users

ABSTRACT

A method of locating relevant documents wherein documents are given a fingerprint comprising weights associated with particular topic categories of a classification system, each weight representing a degree to which the document relates to the particular topic category. Documents whose fingerprints have a predetermined degree of mathematical overlap with the fingerprint may be considered relevant. Fingerprints of texts may be combined to define user fingerprints and user fingerprints may be combined to define community user fingerprints, which can be monitored. Changes in the interest of the online community may be monitored and automatically reported to advertisers who can then instantly adjust their advertising campaign. Similarly, changes in community interest may be reported to pharmaceutical companies monitoring drug side effects. The methods may be used in combination with keyword searching.

PRIORITY INFORMATION

This patent application claims priority from U.S. nonprovisional patent application Ser. No. 11/731,751 filed Mar. 30, 2007 by Applicants John B. Collins, Jerome Verlin, Can D. Akyuz and Stuart Donnelly.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The field of this invention is methods and systems for searching text, and more particularly, improved methods of searching large quantities of text to find relevant content by comparing two or more pieces of text for similarity of content that has been abstracted from the text.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION AND DISCUSSION OF THE PRIOR ART

An individual wishing to find a piece of text that contains content similar to the content of another piece of text will often search for words that exist in both pieces. Likewise, an individual wishing to find relevant pieces of text will often search for specific words that are thought likely to indicate relevant content in text.

These techniques are central to methods for searching electronic records for relevant text but are also used for searching analog records. Examples of the latter would include concordances and library subject catalogs.

The limitations of existing methods are several: 1) words, and especially acronyms, may have multiple meanings; 2) large records, such as lengthy books and encyclopedias, might contain the specific words themselves but be largely irrelevant to the content sought or contain only a small section of relevant content in a much larger document; 3) text using synonyms of the specific words used for searching might not be found; and, 4) text written in foreign languages will be largely inaccessible.

In general, since there are many ways of expressing the same thought, words representing snippets of the text are not the ideal thing to look for. There is a compelling need for a user to find text that contains the meaning and thoughts that the user is looking for. There is a compelling need for a user to search and find relevant textual content that does not suffer from the drawbacks of the prior art and that allows a user who desires to find relevant content, and who tells the computer to look for some particular text, to infer the meaning of that text rather than to conduct a search that is confined to the literal words of the text themselves.

When a user searches for a keyword, advertisers want to post advertisements next to the results of the search request. Advertisers bid on particular combinations of words and will pay to have their advertisements placed high on the search results page. The search engine gets paid when users open one of the advertisements of the advertiser. If the advertisement is relevant to the user's actual interest, the user is much more likely to click on and open up an advertisement and thereby generate revenues for the search engine. For example, if a user is searching for information concerning a news story relating to a murder that was in the news the user might type in the following text as a search request: “Laci Peterson's body washed ashore”. An advertiser who is selling body wash does not want to waste his advertisement on user's who placed that search. Moreover, a search engine does not want to lose revenues from users who do not click on an advertisement due to the advertisement being of low relevance and interest to the user who sees it. There is therefore a compelling need for search engines and advertisers to find text that contains the meaning and thoughts that the user is looking for.

Current methods available to advertisers fail to detect and respond to sudden changes in the online community's topics of interest. Hence, advertisers are often unable to adjust their advertising campaigns to meet this sudden demand for information (and related products and services) connected with these surges in interest. Furthermore, these surges in interest can occur over discrete geographic areas within the overall theater of an advertiser's campaign. As can be seen, there is a need for a method and system that can immediately detect changes in the online community's interests to enable advertisers to respond in real time to such changes by adjusting their advertising campaigns or by tailoring such campaigns to specific geographic areas.

In addition, pharmaceutical companies are known to have a compelling need to keep abreast of the side effects of drugs both before and after the drug has entered the market. Doing so can be costly and time-consuming since they may involve double blind clinical studies. New side effects cannot easily be searched on the Internet since the side effects are not yet known. Furthermore, searching the Internet or the blogosphere for all information about a particular drug would simply turn up too much information. It has been reported that if the drug company Merck had reports of partially used prescriptions for Vioxx®, it would have been useful for it to stay on top of the developments of reported side effects for Vioxx®, its drug.

As can be seen there is a need for more effective ways for pharmaceutical companies to monitor the side effects of the pharmaceuticals they sell.

SUMMARY OF THE PRESENT INVENTION

The present invention addresses the limitations of searches based on words by abstracting the content of the individual's words to provide guidance for further searches. In one preferred embodiment of the method of the present invention the following steps take place:

1) The individual finds a first piece of text (a “target”) containing relevant content;

2) A Plurality of classifications are assigned to the target according to a classification scheme such as the Dewey Decimal System, Library of Congress classification system, U.S. Patent classification codes or other classification systems, ontologies and taxonomies used for particular segments of the universe of all existing pieces of text;

3) Weights are assigned to the said plurality of classifications of the target;

4) The plurality of weights comprises a classification tensor. In the preferred embodiment, the plurality of weights is scaled such that the sum of squares of the weights adds up to unity (i.e. the number “1”). The scaled, weighted classifications constitute a fingerprint of the target. Alternatively, unscaled weights can be used. In this case, overlaps are computed with unscaled weights and compared later. Specifically, the overlap of a “target” piece of text with itself is compared to the overlap of a target piece of text with another piece of text.

5) A second piece of text is classified and scaled weights are assigned as described in steps 2, 3 and 4. The scaled, weighted classifications of the second piece of text constitute a fingerprint of the second piece of text;

6) The target text is compared to the second piece of text by calculating the overlap of the two fingerprints. To calculate the overlap, the fingerprints can be correlated to each other. The overlap is conveniently calculated by regarding each classification category as a dimension in an n-dimensional space (where “n” is the number of all possible classification categories) and by regarding each weight as a magnitude in that dimension. Each fingerprint, that is, each classification tensor, is reduced in the preferred embodiment to an n-dimensional vector. The overlap can be quantified by calculating the inner product of the two fingerprints. The second piece of text will be considered similar to the target if the overlap, or inner product, is sufficiently large.

OBJECTS AND ADVANTAGES

The following objects and advantages may appear in certain embodiments of the present invention:

(1) to provide an improved method of searching text;

(2) to provide an improved method of searching text to find relevant text;

(3) to provide an improved method of searching text that considers an overall meaning or content of the text rather than merely the individual words of the text;

(4) to provide a method of search for relevant text that is applicable to a large universe of text;

(5) to provide a method of searching text that in certain embodiments draws on a user's search history;

(6) to provide a method of searching text that in certain embodiments draws on the assumption that for at least a certain period of time a user will tend to want material that is similar to what the user's previously and recently accessed text;

(7) to provide a method of searching text that in certain embodiments has a step that creates for purpose of reference a user's fingerprint which characterizes the text that user looked at in the user's most recent searches in terms of a list of paired data, the first entry in the pair being a topic within a multi-topic classification system and the second entry in the pair being the degree to which the text involves (is classifiable as being in) such topic;

(8) to provide a method of searching for relevant text that uses as its starting point any piece of text that the user thinks is relevant;

(9) to provide a method of searching for relevant text that achieves a greater placement of a user's highly relevant “hits” higher up in the list of “hits”;

(10) to provide a method of searching for relevant text that utilizes a user's previously displayed interest in certain types of text and which also can detect a change in the user's interest;

(11) to provide a method of searching text that can be used to obtain an improved ranking of search results from a previous search performed by a major search engine such as Google®;

(12) to provide a method of searching text that characterizes any piece of text as a list of paired data, the first entry in the pair being a topic of a multi-topic classification system and the second entry in the pair being the degree to which the text is classifiable as being in such topic;

(13) to provide a method of searching text that can more quickly find criminal or terrorist activities by people using chat rooms;

(14) to provide a method of searching text that improves the quality of Google® searches and of searches from other major search engines by re-ranking the search results obtained from such search engines to obtain more relevant rankings;

(15) to provide a method of searching the patent database and other similarly-sized databases that is an improvement over the current word based searches of the prior art;

(16) to provide a method of searching for relevant text whose algorithm contains only steps having scalar time requirements;

(17) to provide a method of searching for relevant text whose algorithm contains no steps that are so complex from the computer science point of view that updating the database takes too long;

(18) to provide a method of searching text whose time complexity is O(N) or faster;

(19) to provide a method of searching text that is ideal for updating databases, for example databases of a corporation;

(20) to provide a method of searching text whose algorithm only contains steps whose work is linearly proportional to the size of the database;

(21) to provide a method of searching for relevant text that finds relevant text based on the meaning of the text;

(22) to provide a method of searching for relevant text whose algorithm would not be misled by text in the form of acronyms;

(23) to provide a method of searching text that blocks pornographic or otherwise undesirable material more effectively than prior art methods and algorithms;

(24) to provide a method of searching text that improves the degree to which highly relevant search results are listed in the earliest part of the list of search results;

(25) to provide a method of searching text that improves the degree to which highly relevant search results are listed in the earliest part of the list of search results even for word or phrase searches that have been run countless times, i.e. the “Top Google® Searches”;

(26) to provide a method of searching text that can operate on a pre-classified universe of text or a universe of text that has not yet been pre-classified;

(27) to provide a method of searching text that makes use of a particular classification schemes such as the Dewey Decimal System, Library of Congress classification system, U.S. Patent Classification system or another classification system;

(28) to provide a method of searching text that is particularly useful for searching text on the world wide web;

(29) to provide a method of improved text searching that allows advertisers who advertise in the universe of text to achieve higher click through rates;

(30) to provide a method of improved text searching that allows advertisers who advertise in the universe of text, for example the world wide web, to achieve higher revenues from their advertisements;

(31) to provide a method of comparing text based on the abstraction of the context of the text;

(32) to provide such a method of searching for relevant text in a universe of text which method can be enhanced and quickened considerably by pre-classifying the universe of text using an inverted list;

(33) to provide a method of searching text that allows a user to control the degree of precision level of the search results by modulating a “threshold cut-off” variable in the search algorithm;

(34) to provide a method of searching for relevant text that allows a user to adjust the precision level of the search to match the degree to which the user is searching for a very specific type of content;

(35) to provide a method of searching for relevant text whose algorithm creates a fingerprint for each piece of text searched;

(36) to provide a method of searching text whose algorithm represents any piece of text as a multi-dimensional vector where the number of dimensions is the number of topic categories in the classification system;

(37) to provide a method of searching text that requires classifying a universe of documents as a vector, classifying a target piece of text as a vector and then comparing the target vector with the vectors of the pieces of text in the universe of text in terms of its mathematical overlap with the target vector;

(38) to provide such a method as in Object and Advantage “(37)” where the comparison is performed by calculating the dot product between the vectors;

(39) to provide a method of searching text whose algorithm includes representing each piece of text as a vector and then normalizing the vectors to give the vector useful mathematical properties, such as establishing threshold for overlap computations;

(40) to provide a method of searching a universe of text that can be classified in approximately 10,000 topic categories wherein the algorithm makes use of simplification steps to speed up the searching;

(41) to provide a method of searching a universe of text that can be classified in approximately 10,000 topic categories wherein the algorithm makes use of simplification step that allows the algorithm to only have to search in up to 75 topic categories;

(42) to provide a method of searching text that is practical and effective;

(43) to provide a method of searching for relevant text that is grounded primarily in the meaning of text rather than the presence of individual words;

(44) to provide a method of searching text that measures the overlap in meaning between a “reference point” piece of text (sometimes called a first piece or a target piece of text) and the pieces of text in the universe of documents/text; and

(45) to provide a method of searching for text that in certain embodiments utilizes a user's fingerprint to implement the search without the user having to input any specific search term or phrase.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 a is a graph showing a fingerprint of classifications for a target piece of text pertaining to Pennsylvania apple orchards in accordance with the method of the present invention;

FIG. 1 b is a graph showing a fingerprint of classifications for a target piece of text pertaining to AMD Linux workstations in accordance with the method of the present invention;

FIG. 2 a is a graph showing relevance of hits at various positions in a search conducted by Google® for “Pennsylvania apple orchards”;

FIG. 2 b is a graph of improved relevance of hits taken from the Google® search of FIG. 2 a shown at various positions by searching using the algorithm of the present invention;

FIG. 2 c is an ideal graph of perfect relevance for position for a search of “Pennsylvania apple orchards”;

FIG. 3 a is a graph showing relevance of hits at various positions in a search conducted by Google® for “AMD Linux workstations”;

FIG. 3 b is a graph of relevance of hits taken from the Google® search of FIG. 3 a shown at various positions by searching using the algorithm of the present invention;

FIG. 3 c is an ideal graph of perfect relevance for position for a search of “AMD Linux workstations”;

FIG. 4 a is a graph showing relevance of hits at various positions in a search conducted by Google® of an article describing a text classification program;

FIG. 4 b is a graph of improved relevance of hits taken from the Google® search of FIG. 4 a shown at various positions by searching using the algorithm of the present invention;

FIG. 4 c is an ideal graph of perfect relevance for position for a search of the text in the article describing the text classification program of FIGS. 4 a and 4 b;

FIG. 5 a is a ranking of relevance of text returned from the search phrase “Sweet Home Alabama” where darker shades denote greater relevance to the movie by that name;

FIG. 5 b shows the relevance of the text charted in FIG. 5 a when the pieces of text are re-sorted using the algorithm of the present invention wherein shades on the left denote relevance to the movie and shades on the right denote relevance to the song; and

FIG. 6 is a simplified flow chart of the operation of software that reads text, processes classification data and compares the fingerprint of the target to the fingerprint of the text in accordance with the method of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

In certain preferred embodiments of the method of the present invention, one has to classify the universe of text that is to be searched. As will be explained in further detail below, in other preferred embodiments, this step is unnecessary because the starting point of other embodiments of the method of the present invention can be a list of search results performed by a search engine such as Google® which has its own method of classifying and has already classified a large universe of documents, albeit in a proprietary manner.

The following is a generic description of the basic steps of the method of the present invention for locating relevant documents within a universe of documents that has not been classified.

The universe of documents is first classified by creating a fingerprint for each document in the universe of documents. The fingerprint can be said to represent a list. It should be emphasized that there can be a number of ways of describing the fingerprint. Furthermore, if the fingerprint is described as a list, there can also be a number of ways of describing that.

One way of describing the fingerprint is that it represents a list where each item in the list is composed of a pair of data. The first data item in the pair of data is a numerical representation of a topic category. For convenience, the term “topic” is sometimes used herein instead of the phrase “topic category”. The second data item in the pair of the data is a numerical representation of a weight that has been assigned to the topic category represented by the first data item. The weight is a measure of the degree to which the text of the document in question is related to the topic category of the first data item, i.e. the extent to which it might be fitting to classify that document as being in that topic category (as a matter of library science). In terms of the algorithm, the topic category is first obtained and then the weight is assigned to said topic category. For clarity, an example of a pair of data would be (1234, 0.5). In that case the document is said to have a 0.5 relevance to topic category number 1234.

Another way of describing the fingerprint is that it represents a list of weights that correspond to particular topic categories of the classification system, where the weights represent the degree to which the document or text is related to that particular topic category. Another way of describing the fingerprint is that the fingerprint represents a list of topic categories that a piece of text most relates to and weights associated with said topics. Still another way of describing the fingerprint is as a mathematical vector in an n-dimensional space where a particular weight associated with a particular topic category represents the magnitude of the vector in that dimension and where the topic categories represent the dimensions of the space.

The topic categories are those that appear in a particular classification system. An example of a classification scheme or system is the Dewey Decimal System, the Library of Congress's classification system, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office Classification System. Other classification systems, ontologies and taxonomies used for particular segments of the universe of all existing pieces of text may also be used.

In a preferred embodiment, however, the fingerprint list includes (has a nonzero weight for) only those topic categories that most closely (as compared to the other topic categories) relate to the text of the document (in the universe of documents). Accordingly, while a particular classification system might have 10,000 topic categories, the fingerprint list takes only the most related topics, the concept of “most related” being defined more clearly and precisely below. For example, if “music” hypothetically were a topic category and the target text were an article heavily focused on music, then the topic category “music” would be included in the fingerprint list along with the weight measuring the extent to which the target text relates to music.

In a preferred embodiment, the assigning of weights relating a text or a document to each topic category is accomplished through one of various commercially available automated computer programs that are word-based. Typically, such programs take into consideration the frequency of the words, among other things. With respect to the Dewey Decimal System of classification, such a commercially available program exists to assign Dewey Decimal System classifications and weights. It is called Scorpion Open Source Project and it is owned by Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (“OCLC”) of Dublin, Ohio. Information (incorporated herein in its entirety by reference) concerning using OCLC's Scorpion Open Source Project may be found at http://www.oclc.org/research/software/scorpion/default.htm and at http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/auto_class/default.htm. Another product called the Sense Engine is available from Crystal Reference Systems, Limited of Holyhead, UK (see www.crystalreference.com) and it performs similar functions for another classification system. Likewise, the MTI (Medical Text Indexer) software, produced by the National Library of Medicine's Medical Text Indexing Initiative, automatically classifies text relevant to medical interests.

It should be appreciated that while the method of the present invention requires that some automated program to assign weights is typically a program that measures the frequency of words, there may be other computer programs that are capable of assigning weights in other manners. For example, it is believed that artificial intelligence programs can parse the grammar of the sentence of a text and reach a conclusion from this as to the relatedness of a text to a particular topic category. Thus, the method of the present invention is not concerned with the algorithm of the computer program that assigns weights to each topic category with respect to a piece of text or a document.

It is further noted that the term “document” or “text” is to be understood broadly and incorporates graphics, foreign languages and any data presentation known or presently unknown that can be made to follow the steps of the method of the present invention.

In the next step in the method the user identifies a first piece of text, called a “target” text that contains relevant content. This is done in one of several ways—either by typing text in, selecting a piece of text that was previously found in a previous search or provide a collection of past search terms searched for, or in other ways.

Then the user creates a “fingerprint” for this target text. Again, using the way of describing the fingerprint as a list of paired data, the fingerprint represents a list where each item in the list is composed of a pair of data, the first piece of data in the pair being a numerical representation of a topic category and the second item in the pair being a numerical representation of a weight. Again, in a preferred embodiment the fingerprint list includes only those topic categories that most closely (as compared to the other topic categories) relate to the target text. Thus, each weight is associated with each of a plurality of topic categories and describes a degree to which the target text or piece of text relates to the topic and hence can be properly classified in the topic category as a matter of library science.

The target text is then compared to each of the documents in the universe of documents by calculating the overlap of the two fingerprints, i.e. by comparing the fingerprint for the target or first piece of text with the fingerprint for each document in the universe of documents. The output of this search is a ranking of each document in terms of the mathematical overlap of its fingerprint with the fingerprint of the target text.

To calculate the overlap, the fingerprints can be correlated to each other. The overlap is conveniently calculated by regarding each classification category as a dimension in an n-dimensional space (where “n” is the number of all possible classification categories) and by regarding each weight as a magnitude in that dimension. Each fingerprint, that is, each classification tensor, is reduced in the preferred embodiment to an n-dimensional vector. The overlap can be quantified by calculating the inner product of the two fingerprints. The second piece of text will be considered similar to the target if the overlap, or inner product, is sufficiently large.

Finally, the method selects those documents in the universe of documents whose fingerprint commonality or overlap (representing the degree of that document's mathematical overlap with the fingerprint of the target text) ranks high enough based on a threshold number set in advance.

With respect to the target text and with respect to the documents in the universe of documents, the plurality of weights comprises a classification tensor. In one preferred embodiment, the plurality of weights is scaled. In a further preferred embodiment, the plurality of weights is scaled such that the sum of squares of the weights adds up to unity. The scaled, weighted classifications constitute a fingerprint of the target.

In an alternative embodiment, unscaled weights can be used. In this case, overlaps are computed with unscaled weights and compared later. The overlaps are calculated with unscaled weights but then scaled after the fact to put the overlaps in quantitative order.

Specifically, the overlap of a “target” piece of text with itself is compared to the overlap of a target piece of text with another piece of text. In other words, assuming the type of scaling being performed is scaling to unity (i.e. normalization), after computing the overlap number, which involves taking the inner product of the two vectors, one would take that number and normalize it after the fact by simply dividing that number by “x”, where “x” is the product of the square root of the sum of the squares from the first vector (the first vector for convenience being considered the fingerprint of the target text) with the square root of the sum of the squares from the second vector (the second vector for convenience being considered the fingerprint of the text you are comparing it to).

It should be fully appreciated that the present invention contemplates that the timing of the scaling of the weights is not essential to the present invention. There may for example be automated computer programs that calculate the weights and also scale the weights so that their output is already scaled weights.

In theory, unscaled weights can be used and the overlaps never scaled either but if this were done the overlaps would only represent a qualitative measure of the similarity between the fingerprints. In such a case the overlaps could possibly provide some meaning if, for example, the automated computer program that provided the weights had a fairly narrow range in which the weights fell.

To the extent that the fingerprints are viewed as vectors in n-dimensional space, scaling of the weights represents make the lengths of the vectors uniform so that only the direction of the vectors are compared.

As can be appreciated, once a fingerprint has been determined for a piece of text, other pieces of text with similar fingerprints can readily be found. This can occur even if the other pieces of text contain no words in common with the target and even if the second piece of text is written in a foreign language.

Abstracting the Interests of the Individual User

The present invention further pertains to assembling a fingerprint not of a piece of text but of the individual user. As an individual user accesses a piece of text, the fingerprint of this piece of text can be summed into an accumulator. This means that the algorithm adds together the weights of the several fingerprints of the various texts that the user accessed. As an example, if a portion of one text fingerprint is said to have data pairs (1234, 0.3), (1235, 0.1) and (1236, 0.25), a portion of a second text fingerprint is said to have data pairs (1234, 0.4), (1235, 0.15) and (1236, 0.05) and a portion of a third text fingerprint is said to have data pairs (1234, 0.5), (1235, 0.11) and (1236, 0.6) then the sum of this portion of these three text fingerprints would be (1234, 1.2), (1235, 0.36) and (1236, 0.9). The output of this is a new “user” fingerprint that can be said to represent the cumulative fingerprints of the most recently accessed texts accessed by the user over a defined period of time in the past. The cumulative fingerprints can be said to have cumulative weights as the first item in the pair of data. In addition, the user fingerprint can be said to have cumulative weights each of which represent the degree to which recently accessed texts cumulatively relate to that particular topic category.

In other alternative embodiments, the user fingerprint may be obtained by having the algorithm perform a mathematical operation other than simply add together the weights of the several fingerprints.

In one preferred embodiment, when it is said that a user accesses a piece of text, it means the user accesses the text of web links he clicked on that came up during searches conducted by the user.

Each time a single text fingerprint is added to the user fingerprint, the accumulator is re-scaled (e.g. the plurality of weights is scaled such that the sum of squares of the weights adds up to unity) as described above. The theory behind the “user fingerprint” is that a user with an accumulator superimposing the fingerprints of previously interesting pieces of text is thought likely to continue to be interested in similar content. Subsequent searches for relevant text can be re-ranked according to the fingerprint of the user. The user fingerprint can be used instead of a target fingerprint as the reference point for the algorithm of the present invention. It would be unnecessary in that case to even locate a first piece of text whose fingerprint would have to be obtained and then compared to the documents in the list of documents or to the universe of documents being searched. The fingerprint for any document can simply be compared to the user fingerprint and the overlap measured.

In this fashion, words or acronyms will be automatically disambiguated.

The individual user need not explicitly identify a “target” in order to guide the method to find relevant text. The user's own actions cause the user's fingerprint to be accumulated. Thus, by the action of accessing text, the user informs the method of the content that interests the user.

Detecting Change in User's Interest.

From time to time, an individual user will be drawn to a different subject. In this case, the user's fingerprint would mislead the method described herein. Change in interest can be detected by maintaining two fingerprints of the user's interests. One fingerprint (sometimes called the user fingerprint) is the superposition of a larger number of fingerprints of recently accessed text. A second fingerprint (sometimes called the second user fingerprint) is the superposition of a most recent smaller number of fingerprints of recently accessed text. The second fingerprint is constructed exactly like the first with the exception that it superimposes a smaller number of fingerprints. The overlap between the second fingerprint and the user fingerprint is repeatedly measured. A change in interest will be detected when the overlap of the first fingerprint with the second fingerprint falls below a selectable value. Thus, for example, if the first user fingerprint accumulated 100 fingerprints of text, the second user fingerprint might accumulate only the most recent five. In this fashion, the user, by accessing five pieces of text dissimilar to those that had previously interested the user, would instruct the method to disregard the previous fingerprint of the user and direct itself to the user's new interest.

A user has the further option of storing a plurality of user fingerprints. By selecting a relevant user fingerprint, the user can instruct the method to find relevance in whichever stored fingerprint the user chooses.

The method and system described herein can also select a fingerprint automatically from the plurality of stored fingerprints. Automatic selection occurs by comparing the overlap of the fingerprint of recent text with the plurality of stored fingerprints. Whichever of the plurality of stored fingerprints has the greatest overlap represents the user's current interest.

Variable Specificity

At times, a general purpose classification system might have insufficient resolution to be useful. A user interested primarily in minutiae of one topic might find a broad classification inadequate. The method described herein can adjust its specificity by changing the number of possible classification categories. Using the Dewey Decimal System as an example, a basic classification vector might contain 1000 dimensions corresponding to three-digit Dewey classifications. A user wishing to find more specific text can instruct the method to sub-divide the 1000 categories into 10,000, 100,000 or a million categories, and so on. The user might further instruct the method to disregard classifications that provide large contribution to the fingerprint but obscure the details of classification which are most significant to semantic characterization relevant to a user having a specific interest. Some weights of the fingerprint are then disregarded. For example, boilerplate legal language in a document may misleadingly make a document related to music seem “relevant” to a hypothetical topic category called “law”.

System of Implementation

In the preferred embodiment, the method described above is implemented by a suite of software programs.

I) Classification

Specifically, a piece of text is classified using the Scorpion program (see above) although those skilled in the art could use alternative programs such as, but not limited to, those enumerated above.

The Scorpion program produces classifications based on the Dewey Decimal System. A plurality of classification indices is produced along with weighting factors. The indices can vary in precision from three digits to a greater number of digits up to eight or more. The weighting factors provide relative likelihoods of the correctness of the classification.

A) Number of Classifications

In a typical application, about seventy-five classifications and their corresponding weighting factors are produced. The classifications can have different levels of precision. That is, some of the classifications of a particular piece of text might have just three digits of precision while other classifications could have four, five, six or more digits.

The method has a small sensitivity to the number of classifications. Thus, the preferred number of classifications can be varied by the user if an increase or decrease in the number of classifications is thought to produce more useful results. It is varied simply by instructing the automated program (i.e. Scorpion) as to the number of weights to use for each document.

B) Setting the Precision Level

The level of precision in comparing two pieces of text is determined by the number of digits in the classification code. A user wishing to be inclusive of the greatest possible pieces of text would choose a low level of precision. If low precision is preferred, as few as three, or even fewer, digits of precision would be used. A user searching for a very specific type of content would employ a larger number of digits, up to eight or more.

In our embodiment, about four digits of precision appear to be a useful starting point. Four digits of precision provide up to 10,000 classification categories.

Setting of the precision level can be automated. A useful measure of the success of the method in finding relevant text is the value of the largest dot product of the fingerprint of the target text with any of the pieces of text found in the domain of searched text. Whenever the largest dot product is small, the level of precision can be lowered automatically until the largest dot product is greater than some chosen threshold.

In our embodiment, a convenient threshold for the dot product is about 0.2. Whenever the largest dot product is less than 0.2, the level of precision is reduced by one digit until the largest dot product exceeds 0.2.

C) Accumulating the Weighting Factors

For easiest comparison, the classifications and their corresponding weighting factors can be collapsed to a uniform level of precision. Once a choice is made for the level of precision, classifications corresponding to higher levels of precision are collapsed to the uniform lower level.

If, for example, four digits of precision are being used, then classifications having five digits of precision are combined and regarded as one classification at a lower level of precision.

To illustrate, a piece of text producing the set of classifications 123.45, 123.46 and 123.47 (and weighting factors of 878, 1024 and 655 respectively) can be regarded as being in the four digit classification 123.4. The weighting factors for classifications 123.45, 123.46 and 123.47 are combined.

A number of choices exist for combining the weighting factors. In our embodiment, the weighting factors are summed. Other embodiments can use, alternatively, an average, a median, a maximum, a minimum or any other suitable mathematical function of the weighting factors.

In the illustration given above, the weighting factors for classifications 123.45 (weighting factor 878), 123.46 (weighting factor 1024) and 123.47 (weighting factor 655) are added to produce the collapsed classification 123.4 with a weighting factor of 2557. This procedure can be continued until any desired smaller level of precision is reached.

II) Display of Classification—The “Fingerprint”

The classification of content can conveniently be displayed as a graph having as its horizontal axis the Dewey Decimal codes and its vertical axis the accumulated weights of those codes. FIGS. 1 a and 1 b are two such examples of fingerprints graphically represented this way. FIGS. 1 a and 1 b relate to two searches—one search for a piece of text resulting from the phrase “Pennsylvania Apple Orchards” and one search for a piece of text resulting from the phrase “AMD Linux workstations”. It is evident upon inspection that the overlap between the two fingerprints depicted in FIGS. 1 a and 1 b will be small.

It is noted that the dots in the graphs of the drawing figures represent non-zero weights. For the purpose of more easily interpreting the graphed data, the dots in these graphs have been connected by lines. These connecting lines traverse categories whose weights are actually zero.

III) Comparison of Content

Once the list of classifications and their accumulated weighting factors have been constructed, two pieces of text can be compared for similarity as described above in the section discussing “fingerprints” and abstraction of content.

The two lists of classification categories and corresponding weights can conveniently be regarded as normalized, sparse vectors have as their number of dimensions the number of possible categories of which only about 75 can have non-zero weights (since the maximum number of classification weights is chosen to be about 75). In the preferred embodiment, the comparison is made using a dot product of these two vectors, the formula for which can be found in numerous elementary texts. Two pieces of text having similar fingerprints will have a dot product approaching unity. Dissimilar pieces of text will have dot products approaching zero.

IV) Ranking of Similarity

A) Case A: Classifications of Comparison Text are Already Computed

If the classification categories and weighting factors of potential comparison pieces of text are already known, the similarity of a target piece of text to the potential comparison pieces of text can be simply computed by means of the dot product at the chosen level of precision (i.e. the chosen number of classification categories, or, the chosen number of digits of precision).

To achieve this simplicity of comparison, classification categories and weighting factors can be appended to a piece of web text at the time the piece of web text is indexed by a web searching program. In the universe of web text this would imply re-examining all text currently known to the web searching program

In smaller domains of the universe of web text, such as the US Patent and Trademark Office's database of US patents, or an annual portion of the Reuters database, it is feasible for an individual user to pre-classify all of the pieces of text in this smaller domain.

Thus, for example, a user wishing to find a patent description that is similar to a target patent description could compute the dot product of the target patent to the classification vectors of all the patent descriptions in the database.

Speeding Up the Calculation

One method of finding the most similar content is to search every piece of text and compute their respective dot products. While this is simple to program and might be suitable for small databases of text, it would become very slow as a database became large. Consequently, databases are preferentially searched by means of an inverted list. Inverted lists are used routinely to search for documents containing specific words. A brief description of the use of inverted lists to search for documents containing specific words is useful in order to describe the use of inverted lists in searching for classifications.

When a user enters a search term in a search engine, the search engine does not scan the universe of text looking for occurrences of that term. Rather, the search engine has prepared earlier a list of all words that exist in the universe of text. When a new document is added to the universe of text known to the search engine, the search engine records in the list of all words an entry, for each word in the list, indicating that the new document contains a specific word. Thus, when a user enters a search word, the search engine already knows the location of every document that contains that word. If multiple search terms are used, finding documents that contain all the search terms is a Boolean merge of several lists.

In our invention, the concept of inverted lists is used to find text whose fingerprint is similar to the user's fingerprint.

Algorithm for Inverted Search of Classification Weights with Threshold Cutoff of Overlaps

In this section, a means is described to accelerate the search for pieces of content having high overlap. Acceleration is achieved by two algorithmic devices. The first is an inverted list. That is, a database is maintained that stores a pointer to a piece of content having a non-zero weight for a given classification. The second is a formula by which a lower bound to the overlap can be set below which the user is no longer interested in the content.

Inverted List

In our proposed embodiment, a piece of content (i.e. a “document”) is classified into 75 weighted categories out of 10,000 possible categories (later, we will discuss alternative classifications involving different numbers of possible categories, specifically 1000 and 100,000).

In our inverted list, each possible category (of the 10,000 possible categories) is associated with a an ordered list containing data pairs comprising a) a pointer to the document, b) the classification weight of that document. The list is ordered according to the magnitude of the classification weight.

When seeking documents similar to a target document (or other word string), we first classify the target. Other documents similar to the target will be found only in those lists corresponding to the classification categories that exist in the target. Since we keep no more than 75 classification weights, we need examine no more than 75 ordered lists (out of 10,000 lists in total).

In practice, the search for similar documents would occur like this:

1) classify the universe of documents (done once, and added to for each new document); 2) create a database of 10,000 lists (one for each classification category) containing pairs of data consisting of pointers and weights (in order by weight) (done once, and added to for each new document); 3) classify the target; 4) compute the similarity of the target with documents in the database by calculating the overlap of the classification weights of the target with those of each candidate document in the universe of documents. Note that we need traverse no more than 0.75% of the lists since no more than 75 weights are preserved out of 10,000 possible classifications. (Note also that each document could be represented as many as 75 times if it were to have 75 unique surviving classification weights).

The following example is provided. Suppose a target had classification categories of 123.4, 234.5 and 345.6 with weights of 0.75, 0.60 and 0.28 (note: the sum of squares is ˜1.0). To find similar documents, we need look only in the lists of documents with classification weights in these three categories. If a document lacks a classification weight in all of these categories it cannot have a non-zero overlap with the target.

Database Size for the Inverted Lists

Suppose we have 10**9 documents each having 75 weights (the maximum allowed, in practice, much less). We need to store, at a minimum, a record containing an address pointer and a weight for each entry. Suppose further that the record requires 13 bytes of memory. Storage needed for the database of lists would then require 10**9×75×13 bytes=10**12 bytes, i.e. one terabyte.

Storage Plusses and Minuses, i.e. Factors that Affect Storage Requirements Plusses, Factors that Add to Storage Requirements

The database management program is likely to add it own overhead to the storage requirements. This could be substantial. Overhead is likely to multiply the storage requirement by a small number.

Minuses, Factors that Reduce Storage Requirements

In practice, far fewer that 75 classification weights survive the bucketing process. The “bucketing process” refers to the process of taking the results of the automated computer program (i.e. Scorpion), selecting to a uniform level of precision and taking weights in finer levels of precision and combining those weights into the topic categories having a coarser level of precision). In our experience a realistic number is 5 to 20. If we assume that 15 weights survive, our memory requirements are reduced by a factor of 5.

Thresholds for Storage of Classification Weights

Recall that the overlap calculation is a dot product, i.e. a sum of squares. As a result, a weight that is substantially smaller than the largest weight for a document will contribute very little to the overlap. It would then be profligate to retain all the weights. Discarding the weights that contribute small values to the sum of squares (say, less than 5%) could lead to very substantial savings in memory requirement. In the example above, the smallest weight (i.e. 0.28) contributes only 0.08 to the overlap. The cutoff for discard will need to be determined from practical experience.

Alternative classifications

If we were to choose a different number of possible classifications, i.e. 1000 or 10,000, we arrive at a similar memory requirement.

If we choose 1000 classifications, each document could still reside in 75 of them. This is very unlikely. In our experience, documents populate only a small number of classification regions. Consequently, the storage requirements to store our documents with only 1000 categories is somewhat less than is required for 10,000 categories.

By similar analysis, the storage requirements for a classification with 100,000 categories will be somewhat greater than needed for 10,000.

Using sensible data retrieval methods, it is possible to store a few terabytes on disk and retrieve them in batch mode for computation. In our model, a single list from our database of 10,000 lists could be swapped into main memory for computation and then be replaced by the next needed list. To compute an overlap, not more than 75 lists would need to be swapped into memory to compute one value.

Threshold Cutoff

Discussed above is an idea to limit the stored classification weights to those that will make substantial contributions to calculated overlaps. This is a static cutoff implemented at the time the database is created. The static cutoff reduced the need for computer storage.

A dynamic cutoff is described below that reduces the need for computer processing time.

When an overlap calculation is performed, we compute the dot product of the classification weights of the target with those of the documents in the database. The weights of the target are ordered and normalized (i.e. the sum of squares equals one) with the largest first.

To begin, we start with the category corresponding to the largest weight in the target. In our database there will be an ordered list containing pointers to all the documents with surviving classification weights in that category. This list is ordered, as well, having at the beginning of the list the documents with the largest weights for that category.

EXAMPLE

Using the same example as used above (Suppose a target had classification categories of 123.4, 234.5 and 345.6 with weights of 0.75, 0.60 and 0.28) we can examine the dynamic cutoff. A perfect overlap is 1.0. Let's assume that the target is not in the database. We look first in the list corresponding to category 123.4 (because the target had its largest weight for this category). Let's further suppose that the first entry in the list for category 123.4 has the following classification weights: 123.4 0.80, 234.5 0.20 and others not including 345.6. The overlap would be 0.75×0.80+0.60×0.20=0.72. This warrants further examination.

Recall that the greatest overlap will occur when the weights of the document in the database exactly match the weights of the target. In our example, the weight for category 123.4 in the first entry in the database was 0.80 (compared to the target's 0.75). Consequently (because our weights are normalized), the overlap cannot be a perfect 1.0 regardless of how the remaining weights are distributed. We can calculate the least amount by which our overlap must fall short.

After calculating the first term in the overlap (which we'll call t1×d1, i.e. 0.75×0.80=0.60) the overlap stands at 0.60. 0.60 is actually greater than the product that would obtain had the target been in the database. But, there is a price for this. The remaining weights in the database must be reduced because our weights are normalized.

After the second term is computed, our overlap stands at:

0.75×0.80+0.60×0.20=0.72

If the target had been in the database, the overlap at this stage would have been 0.9225 i.e. 0.75×0.75+0.60×0.60=0.9225.

The difference between 0.9225 and 0.72 (i.e. 0.2025) cannot be recovered. The upper bound to this overlap is 0.7975. This result can be asserted without knowledge of the remaining terms other than the property that the weights are normalized.

At some point in our ordered list of weights, the weight for the first category will fall below the corresponding weight in the target. At this point the upper bound for the overlap will be lowered even after one product of terms. Again using our example (Suppose a target had classification categories of 123.4, 234.5 and 345.6 with weights of 0.75, 0.60 and 0.28), Let us use as an example that the document in the list had a weight for category 123.4 of 0.4. The overlap after one term would be:

0.75×0.40=0.300 which is less than

0.75×0.75=0.5625 by 0.2625.

The upper bound to our overlap is therefore 1.0−0.2625=0.7375.

At some further point, the weight for this category will fall to a level such the upper bound for the overlap will fall below a dynamic threshold. That is, a value that the user designates as being beneath his level of interest. Since our list is ordered by the classification weight, no further computations would be needed for this classification category.

At the level of individual documents, the overlap calculation can be halted whenever the upper bound falls below a threshold.

In the preferred embodiment being discussed, a document can exist in up to 75 categories. Accordingly, documents similar to the target will therefore be encountered several times.

A similar result is expected for the remaining categories. However, the situation is more complicated. Consider the second category in our target, 234.5. (Suppose, again, a target had classification categories of 123.4, 234.5 and 345.6 with weights of 0.75, 0.60 and 0.28) The first entry in the database for this category (i.e. 234.5) could have a very small weight for this category but a very large weight for the first category (recall that our lists are ordered by the weight for the category of the list). In this case, the overlap could still be large in which case we would have seen the document already and need not recompute the overlap.

However, after scanning the first inverted list, the algorithm stopped after falling below a pre-determined greatest upper bound in the dot product. At this point, the algorithm has computed a dot product for every piece of text having a weight for the first classification category (i.e. 123.4) that is greater than the weight of the last piece of text examined. Consequently, in all other inverted lists, the algorithm will encounter no new piece of text having a weight for the first category that is greater than the weight encountered in the last piece of text examined with respect to the first category.

This observation has an important mathematical consequence. As the algorithm moves on to the second inverted list, the greatest upper bound is limited by the last value examined of the weight in the first inverted list. As a result, the scan of the second inverted list will now be terminated based on a greatest upper bound that is itself limited by two weights, i.e. the last value examined in the first list and the last value in the second list that causes the overlap to fall below its threshold. Moving on to the third list, the greatest upper bound is already limited by the last values of the weights in the first two lists. Clearly, the number of documents whose dot products must be computed will diminish rapidly as the algorithm searches further inverted lists.

B) Case B: Classifications of Comparison Text are Unknown

For the universe of web text, the classifications and weighting factors of a particular piece of text will normally be unknown. In these cases, it is not feasible for an individual user to classify the universe of web text.

In order to compare a target piece of web text, or to compare a user's personal “fingerprint” of interests to a piece of web text, to a piece of unclassified text in the universe of web text an additional step is needed. In the preferred embodiment, a web searching program such as Google is first used to find a list of pieces of text containing a user's search terms. Those trained in the art will recognize that any tool for searching a database for search terms can be used in place of Google.

The list found in this manner will suffer from the limitations of web searching discussed above in the section discussing comparing two pieces of text for similarity. Nonetheless, many relevant pieces of text will be found in the first few dozens, or few hundreds, of the pieces of text found by Google® using search words alone.

It is quite feasible for a user, using the invention described herein, to classify the first few hundred pieces of text returned by Google®. In our embodiment, the classifications produced thereby are compared to a target piece of text, or to the user's personal fingerprint. After completing these comparisons, the list returned by Google® is re-ranked according to the magnitude of the dot products.

V) Display of Results

Evaluation of any improvement to Google's results is subjective. To evaluate our results, a number of searches have been conducted using Google or other web searching programs. The first few hundred pieces of text returned in these searches were inspected and scored for relevance to the target text. In our examples, a five point scale is used on which a score of “5” indicates highest relevance and “1” indicates lowest relevance. If the search program were perfect, the text returned by the search program would be perfectly sorted such that all the text scored with a “5” would come first followed by all of the text scored with a “4” and so on.

In reality, the “5”'s are interspersed among pieces of text having lower relevance. The objective of the present invention is to improve the sorting of the retrieved text to more nearly approximate perfect results.

FIGS. 2 a, 2 b, 2 c 3 a, 3 b, 3 c, 4 a, 4 b, 4 c illustrate the improvements in search relevance achieved by the present invention. A curved line passes through each graph. A full description of the means of finding the curved line is given in a later section labeled VI) Quantification of improvement B) Holistic Methods

As seen in FIG. 2 a, Google achieves a baseline level of relevance which the present invention means to improve. As seen in FIG. 2 a, quite a few highly relevant pieces of text are found well after the first few dozen results returned by the search program.

As shown in FIG. 2 b, application of the method of the present invention to improve the relevance according to the algorithm described above yields qualitatively improved re-sorting of results in comparison with the results shown in FIG. 2 a. In the ideal situation, where the relevance is perfectly sorted, the graph showing relevance of hits at various positions in a search for “Pennsylvania apple orchards” would appear as shown in FIG. 2 c. Perfect relevance has not been achieved, but a significant improvement over Google's relevance is clearly visible.

FIGS. 3 a, 3 b and 3 c show similar findings for a search involving the phrase “AMD Linux workstations.” FIGS. 4 a and 4 b further illustrate improvement in relevance for a text classification search. In this search, an article taken from Doctor Dobbs Journal describing the code for a simple Bayesian text classifier was first identified as a target piece of text. Subsequently, a Google search was conducted using appropriate search words. As before, the results of the Google search were re-ranked according to the present invention.

VI) Quantification of Improvement

Although scoring of relevance is subjective, it is nonetheless possible to quantify the improvement of the present invention over other web searching tools.

A) Ad Hoc Methods

The simplest, although possibly the most meaningful, means of measuring goodness of search results is “first page relevance.” That is, how many of the first ten pieces of text are highly relevant to the user.

At first glance, a search that returned only two highly relevant pieces of text on the first page is less “good” than one that returned ten highly relevant pieces of text. At times this may lead to misperceptions. In some cases, there might be a very limited number of highly relevant items on the web. No matter how good the search program, it cannot find what is not there. Likewise, a very popular item might have many thousands of relevant pieces of text such that filling the first page with “good” results is easy.

In our invention, we measure “first page relevance” by establishing the highest possible score for “first page relevance” based on perfect sorting. If we assign a value of 5 to a piece of highly relevant text (and lower values to less relevant text) then a first page having ten such pieces of text achieves a score of 50. If, however, there are only six pieces of highly relevant text in the universe of web text, a perfect search program would achieve a score of only 30.

A search program that places all six of these highly relevant pieces of text on the first page has done as well as can be done.

A graphical depiction of “first page relevance” is shown in FIGS. 5 a and 5 b. FIG. 5 a shows first page relevance from a search using the search words “Sweet home Alabama.” This string was chosen for its ambiguity—it could refer to the movie starring Reese Witherspoon or to the song by Lynyrd Skynrd. FIG. 5 a represents the different shades or degrees of relevance of text returned from the search phrase “Sweet Home Alabama.” Degrees of line concentration denote relevance to the movie by that name (more concentrated lines denotes greater relevance). If the user's interest were in the song, the relevance of the text returned by the search program is poor—many of the pieces of text listed on the first page refer to the movie by the same name. Text represented by dark blue is highly relevant to the movie. Shades represented by diagonal lines would denote relevance to the song, although no text relevant to the song was found on the first page.

FIG. 5 b shows the relevance if the pieces of text are re-sorted according to the present invention. Shades denote relevance to the movie; shades denote relevance to the song.

In our metric, the goodness of the search results is a simple ratio of the observed score to the highest possible score. Thus, in the example given, the search earned a score of 40 if the user's interest had been the movie but zero if it had been the song.

For some businesses operating in the web domain, other measures of goodness pertain. For example, “first five relevance” might be important to many advertisers. That is, advertisers may find that many users will look no farther than the first five items returned by the search program.

Our metric can be readily modified to quantify goodness of results for any such ad hoc means of estimation.

B) Holistic Method.

A more holistic method examines a fuller range of results without resort to arbitrary cutoffs. In addition, the method should take full regard for the possibility that a very small number of relevant pieces of text may exist or a very large number may exist.

In our method of quantification, the relevance scores of pieces of text are fit to a weighted logistic curve. Our logistic curve has the formula:

Log((y−1)/(4−(y−1)))=m times x+b

Where:

y is the relevance score The range of y is: 1<=y<=5 x is the observed rank m, b are fitting coefficients computed by least squares.

In addition, a small offset is added to the numerator and the denominator to avoid log's of zero.

It is immediately evident that there are far more pieces of text with low relevance than there are those with high relevance. This requires that the formulas be weighted to give equal weight to each category of results. Consequently, in the least squares fit, each result is weighted by 1/(number of results in its category).

Applying this formula, including offsets and weights, gives the final formula for predicted relevance.

Predicted relevance(i)=Lower asymptote+((upper asymptote×10**(m times rank(i)+b)/(1+10**(m times rank(i)+b))

In the present embodiment, the lower asymptote and upper asymptote are conveniently chosen as 0.9 and 5.1, respectively.

C) Interpretation of the Fitted Curve

Returning to FIGS. 2 a, b, and c, the curved lines passing through the graphs of relevance versus search rank can be interpreted.

In the holistic method, the goodness of results is measured by the slope coefficient “m.” With perfect sorting the slope will depend on the number of pieces of text having intermediate levels of relevance (that is relevance scores of 4, 3 or 2). Thus, the best estimate of goodness of results is the ratio of the slope coefficient of actual results to the slope coefficient of perfect results.

In FIG. 2 c, the fitted curve is shown for results that are perfectly sorted. In this example, the slope coefficient of the fitted curve is −0.0099. The Google results (FIG. 2 a) produce a slope coefficient of −0.0028. The present invention has an intermediate value of the slope coefficient of −0.0044 (FIG. 2 b).

Likewise, we may provide an estimate of percent improvement over Google® by computing the ratio

(m(present invention)−m(Google))/(m(perfect sorting)−m(Google))

In the chosen example, the present invention improves the ranking of results by (0.0044−0.0028)/(0.0099−0.0028)=22.5%

Inspection of FIGS. 2 a and 2 b shows clearly that an improvement of this magnitude is clearly evident in the re-sorted rankings.

Those skilled in the art will recognize that any other search program can be used in place of Google® including search programs that may be used for specialized applications.

Further refinements of the algorithms described herein will be self-evident to those exercising the capabilities of the present invention. Not the least of these refinements is the separation of the commercial text, html and other ancillary material from the descriptive portion of the contents of the results returned by the search program.

Software

The key portion of the present invention is the software that computes the overlap of two fingerprints. This software accepts as input the desired number of categories and a specification of precision. The software reads the classification categories and weights and then collapses the weights to the specified precision.

Output consists of the overlap of a target fingerprint with the fingerprint of, say, a few hundred pieces of text found by a search program. The overlap is computed using several variations based on the method of collapsing the weights to a uniform level of precision (i.e. the sum, average, minimum, maximum, median).

Flow Chart

FIG. 6 depicts a simplified flow chart of the operation of the software that reads text, processes classification data and compares the fingerprint of the target to the fingerprint of text to which the target is to be compared.

Programming Code

It should be appreciated that there are a number of ways known to those skilled in computer science to write software code that implements the algorithm of the present invention. A truncated portion of one particular relevant software code is shown below. This software renders into practice the flow chart shown above and contains code for accessing text, calculating appropriate attributes of the text and comparing accessed text to a chosen target.

use File::Glob ‘:glob’; use POSIX qw(log10); # #   analyze_patent.pl is a program to read in class vectors for a series of documents and a standard #   document for comparison #   bucket the classes of all documents, #   read in the original order of the documents and their relevance, #   compute the overlap of the bucket vectors of the standard with the bucket vectors of the documents #   sort by the overlap #   curve fit the sorted relevance using the logistic curve #   create and print a table of the sorted fitted values and measured values of relevance #   create and print a table of the logistic curve parameters #   repeat this process for all combinations of class count and precision values # # #   Define constants # $s_format = “%s”; $tab = “   ”; $space = “ ”; $zero_num = 0; $one_num = 1; $two_num = 2; $three_num = 3; $four_num = 4; $five_num = 5; $eight_num = 8; $twelve_num = 12; $fifty_seven = 57; $fifty_eight = 58; $thousand = 1000; $ten_thousand = 10000; $minus_one = −1; $google_rankf = “%04d”; $relevance_f = “%d”; $class_count[0] = 25; $class_count[1]= 50; $class_count[2]= 75; $class_count[3]= 100; $precision[0] = 100; $precision[1] = 1000; $precision[2] = 10000; $weight[1]=1; $weight[2]=5; $weight[3]=10; $weight[4]=7; $weight[5]=4; $weight_second_switch=“on”; # #   Read in input vaiables (variable values for the logistic curve. # if ($#ARGV == 1)    {    $adjustment = $ARGV[0];    $adjusted_max = $ARGV[1];    } else    {    $adjustment= 0.9;    $adjusted_max = 4.2    } $i_adjustment = int($adjustment * 100); $i_adjusted_max = int($adjusted_max * 100); $s_adjustment = sprintf($i_adjustment,$s_format); $s_adjusted_max = sprintf($i_adjusted_max,$s_format); print “s_adjustment = $s_adjustment s_adjusted_max = $s_adjusted_max \n”; $fitted_max_display=99; $page_count[0] = 100; $results_dir = “c:\\needlebotx\\results\\”; # #   Set up the goodness file which contains the accumulated relevances # $results_goodness = “>”.$results_dir.“goodness_15psw_”.$s_adjustment.“_”.$s_adjusted_max.“.out”; open (GOODNESS,$results_goodness); print GOODNESS “     Goodness Using Center of Relevance \n”; print GOODNESS “DEWEYS DECIMALS PCOUNT  GOOGLE       BEST MIN    MAX ”; print GOODNESS “SUM AVG       MEDIAN \n”; print GOODNESS “ 5's 5 CNTR REL TR TR CNTR 5's    5 CNTR REL TR TR CNTR 5's 5 CNTR REL TR TR CNTR SIGMA 5's 5 CNTR REL TR TR CNTR SIGMA ”; print GOODNESS “5's 5 CNTR REL TR TR CNTR SIGMA 5's    5 CNTR REL TR TR CNTR SIGMA 5's 5 CNTR REL    TR   TR CNTR SIGMA \n”; # #   Set up the bint, bzero file # $results_bs = “>”.$results_dir.“bs_15psw_”.$s_adjustment.“_”.$s_adjusted_max.“.out”; open (BS,$results_bs); print BS “  Bint and bzero using an adjustment of $adjustment and an adjusted max of $adjusted_max \n”; print BS “CLASSES DECIMALS GOOGLE BEST MIN MAX    SUM ”; print BS “AVERAGE MEDIAN \n”; print BS “ BINT BZERO BINT BZERO BINT BZERO BINT 10   BZERO BINT BZERO ”; print BS “BINT BZERO BINT BZERO\n”; # #   Set up the fitted relevance vs position file # $results_sfitted = “>”.$results_dir.“sfitted_15psw_”.$s_adjustment.“_”.$s_adjusted_max.“.out”; open (SFITTED,$results_sfitted); print SFITTED “  S Curve Fits of relevance vs position using and adjustment of $adjustment and an adjusted max of $adjusted_max \n”; print SFITTED “DEWEYS DECIMALS POS GOOGLE BEST MIN    MAX SUM ”; print SFITTED “AVERAGE MEDIAN \n”; print SFITTED “ REL CREL REL CREL REL CREL REL CREL    REL CREL ”; print SFITTED “RELCREL REL CREL\n”; # #   Get a list of nonzero files which contain the class, weight vectors and the url's # $results_glob_wc_h = $results_dir.“http*.txt”; $results_glob_wc_f = $results_dir.“file*.txt”; @results_glob_z_h = glob($results_glob_wc_h); @results_glob_z_f = glob($results_glob_wc_f); @results_glob_z = (@results_glob_z_h,@results_glob_z_f); $res_file_count = $zero_num; foreach $result_file (@results_glob_z)    {    ($dev, $ino, $mode, $nlink, $uid, $gid, $rdev, $size, $atime,       $mtime, $ctime, $blksize, $blocks) = stat($result_file);    if ($size <=> $zero_num)       {       $results_glob_nz[$res_file_count] = $result_file;       $res_file_count=$res_file_count+1;       }    } $res_file_count = $res_file_count −1; $begin_source =   “[BEGIN: SOURCE] ==========================================”; $end_source =   “[END: SOURCE] ============================================”; $begin_classification = “[BEGIN: CLASSIFICATION] ==================================”; $end_classification =  “[END: CLASSIFICATION] ====================================”; $begin_text =   “[BEGIN: TEXT] ============================================”; # #   Read in the Rank file, with relevance measures (1 is best, 5 in worst) #   Sort the rank array by url #   field 1 is the original browser rank, field 2 is the assigned relevance, #   field 3 is the url # $rank_file=“c:\\needlebotx\\url\\rank_rel.txt”; open RANK,$rank_file; $rank_count=$zero_num; while (<RANK>)    {    $rank_in=$_;    chomp $rank_in;    @rank_in_array=split “  ”,$rank_in;    $rank_data[$rank_count][0]=$rank_in_array[0];    $rank_data[$rank_count][1]=$rank_in_array[1];    $rank_data[$rank_count][2]=$rank_in_array[2];    $rank_count = $rank_count + $one_num;    } $rank_count=$rank_count-$one_num; # #   Sort the array by url # my @rank_data_s = sort {$a->[2] cmp $b->[2]} @rank_data; # #   Get the file names and the url from each file and store it in an array # $glob_index=$zero_num; foreach $p_result_file (@results_glob_nz)    {    open PRESULT,$p_result_file;    $glob_data[$glob_index][0]=$p_result_file;    $std_url=“”; PRESL:   while (<PRESULT>)       {       chomp $_;       $in_line = $_;       $in_line_length = length ($in_line);       if ($in_line_length >= $fifty_eight)          {          $in_line_test = substr $in_line,$zero_num, $fifty_eight;          }       else          {          $in_line_test = “”;          }       if ($in_line_length >= $fifty_eight)          {          if ($in_line_test eq $begin_source)             {             $source_on = $on_text;             next PRESL;             }          if ($in_line_test eq $end_source)             {             $source_on = $off_text;             last PRESL;             }          }       if ($source_on eq $on_text)          {          $std_url=$in_line;          chomp $std_url;          $std_url =~ s/Path = //;          $std_url =~ s|http://||;          $std_url =~ s|https://||;          $std_url =~ s|file://||;          $glob_data[$glob_index][1]=$std_url;          }       }    if ($std_url eq “”)       {       $glob_data[$glob_index]=“”;       }    else       {       $glob_index=$glob_index+$one_num;       }    } $glob_count = $glob_index − 1; my @glob_data_s = sort {$a->[1] cmp $b->[1]} @glob_data; # #   Combine the glob and rank arrays leaving out the ranks which did not result in a file # $rank_index_1=$zero_num; $glob_rank_index=$zero_num; for ($glob_index_1=0;$glob_index_1<=$glob_count;$glob_index_1++)    { RITWO:   for ($rank_index_2=$rank_index_1;$rank_index_2<=$rank_count;$rank_index_2++)       {       if ($glob_data_s[$glob_index_1][1] eq $rank_data_s[$rank_index_2][2])          {          $rank_index_found = $rank_index_2;          last RITWO;          }       if ($glob_data_s[$glob_index_1][1] It $rank_data_s[$rank_index_2][2])          {          print “glob entry $glob_data_s[$glob_index_1][1] has no rank entry \n”;          last RITWO;          }       }    $rank_index_1=$rank_index_found;    $glob_rank[$glob_rank_index][0]=$rank_data_s[$rank_index_1][0];    $glob_rank[$glob_rank_index][1]=$rank_data_s[$rank_index_1][1];    $glob_rank[$glob_rank_index][2]=$rank_data_s[$rank_index_1][2];    $glob_rank[$glob_rank_index][3]=$glob_data_s[$glob_index_1][0];    $glob_rank_index =$glob_rank_index + $one_num;    $rank_index_1 = $rank_index_1 + $one_num;    } $glob_rank_index = $glob_rank_index − $one_num; if ($glob_rank_index < $fitted_max_display)    {    $fitted_max_display = $glob_rank_index;    } $checkfile = “> ”.$results_dir.“globrank.txt”; open (CHECKFILE,$checkfile); @glob_rank_sg = sort {$$a[0] <=> $$b[0]} @glob_rank; for ($icheck_7=0;$icheck_7<=$glob_rank_index;$icheck_7++)    {    print CHECKFILE $glob_rank_sg[$icheck_7][0],$tab,$glob_rank_sg[$icheck_7][1],$tab;    print CHECKFILE $glob_rank_sg[$icheck_7][2],$tab,$glob_rank_sg[$icheck_7][3],“\n”;    } # #   Compute the secondary weights; these account for the frequency that each of #   the five relevance values appears. # $count_rel_freq[1..5]=0; for ($glob_rank_index_2=0;$glob_rank_index_2<=$glob_rank_index;$glob_rank_index_2+ +)    {    $rel_freq_index=$glob_rank_sg[$glob_rank_index_2][1];    $count_rel_freq[$rel_freq_index]=$count_rel_freq[$rel_freq_index]+$one_num;    } if ($weight_second_switch_eq “on”)    {    for ($weight_index=1;$weight_index<=5;$weight_index++)       {       if ($count_rel_freq[$weight_index] > $zero_num)          {    $weight_2[$weight_index]=$one_num/$count_rel_freq[$weight_index];          }       else          {          $weight_2[$weight_index] = $one_num;          }       }    } else    {    for ($weight_index=1;$weight_index<=5;$weight_index++)       {       $weight_2[$weight_index] = $one_num;       }

Note, as a practical matter, it is likely that the cooperation of Google® would be necessary to perform the embodiment of the method of the present invention wherein the results of a search by “Google® are re-ranked in accordance with the algorithm of the present invention.

Additional Applications of the Invention

The present invention also has various specific applications that are now discussed.

1. Alerts

Suppose a user wishes to be alerted to the appearance from time to time of new relevant documents on the Internet or in a database. This may occur, for example if a journalist desires to learn of new articles concerning a certain subject. The alert method may apply in cases where that user had performed a previous search and may apply in cases where that user did not. The present invention can be used to alert the user concerning such relevant new documents. First, a reference fingerprint may be calculated. The reference fingerprint may be a user fingerprint or it can be a target piece of text that the user uploads to be used as a reference fingerprint.

The method then comprises classifying new documents that enter a database (e.g. the Internet) so that individual new documents have a fingerprint, where the fingerprint is comprised of a list of weights associated with particular topic categories in a classification system, each of the weights representing a degree to which the document relates to the particular topic category that the weight is associated with, the weights obtained automatically from the computer program.

In certain embodiments, in classifying new documents that enter the database only those new documents that have certain keywords may be classified. For example, a user who is interested in accounting jobs in New York may first use keywords to identify documents that have the words “accountant” and “New York” in them and only then apply the content-based search that compares fingerprints of new documents with a reference fingerprint. Thus not every new document that enters the database may need to be classified and have fingerprints associated with them.

The fingerprint for each individual new document that is classified may then be compared to the reference fingerprint. The user may be alerted to new documents that meet certain criteria. The process of alerting the user about the new document may employ well known means as well as other suitable means not presently known. The alert may advise the user about the new document whose fingerprint has a threshold amount of mathematical overlap with the reference fingerprint that the user has set. The threshold amount may be represented by a scalar number, for example a number between 0 and 1.

If the reference fingerprint is a user fingerprint, the user fingerprint is comprised of a list of cumulative weights associated with particular topic categories in a classification system, each of the cumulative weights representing a degree to which text or texts recently accessed by a user relates to the particular topic category that the cumulative weight is associated with, the cumulative weights being obtained from weights that in turn were obtained automatically from a computer program.

If the reference fingerprint is a target fingerprint, the target fingerprint may represent a fingerprint from a target piece of text submitted by a user. That fingerprint may comprise a list of weights associated with particular topic categories in a classification system, each of the weights in the target fingerprint representing a degree to which the target piece of text relates to the particular topic category that the weight in the fingerprint for the target piece of text is associated with, the weights in the target fingerprint for the target piece of text obtained automatically from a computer program.

The user may set a level of precision for calculating the mathematical overlap, the level of precision represented by a number of digits contained in a classification codes associated with the particular topic categories.

The alert may also be used when a user, who may be a job searcher, wants to see not only new job postings but also “legacy postings” previously posted, say within the last three months before the search. In this case, rather than having to fingerprint everything in the database, which may be very large if the database is the Internet/World Wide Web or else you have to store the fingerprint whenever you calculate a mathematical overlap. Accordingly, the use of inverted lists would be useful to cut the number of documents calculated down from say 10 to the 11^(th) to say 10 to the 6^(th). The alert method may therefore further comprise notifying the user of documents relevant to the user's search that are already in the database by comparing the reference fingerprint to a fingerprint for each document in an inverted list of documents in the database, wherein the inverted list for each topic category of the classification system comprises a weight associated with a particular document of the list of documents, and alerting the user about those documents whose fingerprints have a threshold amount of mathematical overlap with the reference fingerprint.

2. Internet Advertising

Under the method of the present invention, advertisers, instead of bidding on keywords of a user's search may instead bid on offering their advertising text to users whose user fingerprint has a good enough mathematical overlap with the fingerprint of the text of the advertisement (the “advertisement fingerprint”). The present invention thus offers a method for presenting advertisements to a user for display on a user computing device. Typically, the advertisements offered for display are selected from a plurality of advertisements shown to the user.

The method includes a step of obtaining user fingerprints of users who search using a search engine. The search engine may obtain these user fingerprint when users upload this to them. The method further comprises obtaining from an advertiser an advertisement fingerprint. The method further involves computing a mathematical overlap between the advertisement fingerprint and particular user fingerprints of the users and then displaying the advertisement to users whose user fingerprints reach a threshold mathematical overlap.

In order to render the mathematical calculations easier, the method contemplates a step of instructing the algorithm to generate the advertising fingerprint by masking, or ignoring, weights for particular topic categories designated by the advertiser. So, for example, an advertiser may contract with a search engine that the advertisement will be shown on a search results page of a user whose user fingerprint meets a threshold mathematical overlap in only specific topic categories, for example topic categories 7, 9, 43 and 45 out of 10,000 topic categories. In this embodiment, the user's actual search request may be ignored.

Advertisers may find a need to mask or ignore particular topic categories of a user fingerprint and instruct the search engine to do so. For example, in the heat of a presidential election, when a new and interesting vice-presidential pick has just been announced, interest in politics by all users may be so high that advertisers may want to instruct a search engine that the advertiser feeds advertisements to that the search engine should ignore the parts of a user fingerprint relating to politics. The need for masking, in general, with the present invention (not necessarily related to advertising) is also demonstrated by an example of an accountant who also searches sports information a great deal inputs a job search request for a job in accounting. The accountant's user fingerprint, in the topic categories, relating to sports, may have a higher than average weight. The accountant may want to mask, or have the algorithm ignore, the part of his user fingerprint relating to sports by instructing the algorithm to ignore particular categories relating to sports. Similarly, in obtaining a fingerprint for a document, RSS providers may want to mask out topic categories relating to the time of day, which is too “boilerplate” or common to all documents to provide helpful insight into the relevance of the document.

Accordingly, the method also contemplates an embodiment in which the advertisements may be displayed, for example by the search engine, to users (i) whose user fingerprints reach a threshold mathematical overlap, and (ii) who are searching using search requests that contain particular keywords. In the example of the user who typed in as a search request: “Laci Peterson's body washed ashore”, an advertiser may request from the search engine that the advertisement be shown to anyone who has a mathematically defined “high” mathematical overlap in particular topic categories provided that person is searching for text containing the word “body wash”.

3. Detecting Changes in Online Community Interest

It was shown that desirable content could be detected by calculating a “fingerprint” of a desirable piece of text (a “target”) and subsequently calculating the similarity of the fingerprint of the target to the fingerprints of candidate pieces of text. The relevance of the candidate pieces of text can then be scored according to the similarity of the fingerprints. Likewise, a “profile” can be created by combining the fingerprints of more than one target. Such a profile can then be used in the same fashion as the fingerprint of a single piece of text. Individual users can also have their own “user profiles” or “user fingerprints” by storing the fingerprints of the documents or the URL's that they had previously clicked on. This user fingerprint would then reflect the user's current topics of interest and can be used to elucidate further search terms of the user. Searches for any user can then be customized. Searches can even be customized for specific areas of interest of a user.

The user fingerprints may also be combined into master profiles or community fingerprints. The community here may be the online community. The community fingerprint may be arrived at by superimposing all users' recent click-throughs. Such a community fingerprint would represent a profile of the current interests of the online community at a given time. The community fingerprint may be automatically updated as the online community's topics of interest change over time. By comparing the community fingerprints at different times, a change in the interest of the community can be detected. This change can be useful in a number of areas.

The fingerprints of, for example, the last million URL's that were clicked on by the online community within a selected geographical region may form that region's community fingerprint. In the U.S., for example, the U.S. master profile or community fingerprint would reflect the current interests of a large sample of the U.S. online population (i.e. U.S. online consumers). Since this community fingerprint would be automatically updated as the population's interest change, it may continue to automatically reflect the current interests of the online consumers within the region.

Sudden changes of interest in particular topics could be detected by comparing the current community fingerprint to previous community fingerprints. For example, simple subtraction of the two community fingerprints would reveal the topics that have changed significantly.

Advertisers whose advertising copy overlaps significantly in content (conceptually rather than by overlapping keywords) with these changing topics of interest may be automatically informed so that they can respond in real time to such changes by quickly adjusting their current advertising campaigns. For example, if search terms related to the concept of “refinancing one's mortgage” were to suddenly experience a surge of interest then an advertising client wishing to advertise his mortgage refinancing services would be alerted.

The whole process may be automated. Alerted advertisers may be able to bid on advertising spots in optimal proximity to the search results for these particular concepts. During surges in interest, the price of the advertising spots for each relevant advertisement may rise. Advertisers who move early based on automated feedback from the method of detecting changes in online community interests may be better able to obtain better pricing.

Accordingly, the present invention may be expressed as a method of measuring changes in interest of a community of users. The method may include a step of obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute the community at a first time, where the user fingerprints may comprise vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories. The method may also comprise a step of combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints to obtain a first community user fingerprint. The method may further comprise a step of obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute the community at a second time, for example a week later, a month later, a year later etc. The user fingerprints comprise vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories. This method may also include a step of combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints obtained at the second time to obtain a second community user fingerprint. Finally, the method may comprise calculating a mathematical difference between the first community user fingerprint and the second community user fingerprint.

It is appreciated that the method may be extended to more than two different times. For example, the method may further involve obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute the community at a third time and at subsequent times, where the user fingerprints may comprise vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories, combining the user fingerprints obtained at the third time to obtain a third community user fingerprint and combining the user fingerprints obtained at subsequent times to obtain subsequent community user fingerprints; and calculating a community interest over time.

There is more than one way to combine the user fingerprints. The user fingerprints may be combined by assigning equal weights to each individual user who has a user fingerprint (weighting users equally). This may be most useful in cases where one wants to know how people in the community feel about a particular issue, since each person gets equal weight regardless of the number of links generated by that person for that person's user fingerprint.

Another way to combine user fingerprints is to combine the documents or links to the documents that form the basis of the user fingerprints. This method of combining would give equal weight to the links (or the documents represented by the links) but unequal weight to individual user fingerprints, some of whom may have more links than others. This way of combining user fingerprints may be useful to someone who is selling something to the online community because the user's volume of links relating to a particular topic may be correlated with how much that user purchases of products and/or services in that topic and this in turn ought to affect the measurement of that user's contribution to the total amount expected to be purchased. Accordingly, in some embodiments the method may entail combining the user fingerprints to create first and second community user fingerprints by weighting the users by the number of searches conducted by the user and/or by the number of links obtained during searches conducted by the user.

When a new vector is created by combining the user fingerprints into a community user fingerprint, however that is accomplished, the new vector may be normalized by dividing each scalar cumulative weight in the vector by the square root of the sum of the squares of the scalar cumulative weight in the vector.

In contrast to prior art methods of monitoring changes in interest such as monitoring the number of hits in particular keywords, the method of the present invention does not require knowing in advance particular keywords to look for.

The method of the present invention contemplates various ways to calculate the mathematical difference between the first community user fingerprint and a second community user fingerprint representing the interests of the community at a later date. One way is to subtract the first community user fingerprint from the second community user fingerprint to obtain a vector. If there has been a shift in interests of the community you would get a vector with positive integers in the topic category or categories where there has been a shift. The other numbers in the vector may be zero.

A second way of calculating the mathematical difference is by using a distance formula for high dimensional space to measure a distance between an end of a first vector representing the first community user fingerprint and an end of a second vector representing the second community user fingerprint. The result would be a scalar number. The difference formula would be the square root of the sum of the squares of the individual differences between corresponding points on the two vectors that represent the first and second community user fingerprints.

A third way of calculating the mathematical difference is by computing a difference vector running from an end of a first vector representing the first community user fingerprint to an end of a second vector representing the second community user fingerprint. The new vector points from the tip of one vector, say the vector representing the first community user fingerprint, to the tip of the second vector, the second community user fingerprint, thus providing not only the scalar distance between the two vectors but also the direction.

Once the mathematical difference is calculated it may be compared to a predetermined threshold amount, for example a threshold mathematical difference that may be provided by an advertiser. If the mathematical difference between the two community user fingerprints reaches or exceeds the threshold amount the advertiser would be automatically notified. This would allow the advertiser to adjust the advertising campaign which may be premised on the community's interests being of a particular kind and amount.

This method may also be applied to detect increases or upsurges in the side effects of a drug, either before or after the drug enters a market. Often anecdotal side effects are discussed in “documents” which represents blogs in the blogosphere. One or more particular topic categories in the fingerprints of users whose fingerprints make up a community user fingerprint may relate specifically to the side effects of drugs and/or to an increase in interest in the use of particular drugs (e.g. returns of unused prescriptions for such drugs, off-label beneficial uses, abuse, interactions with other medications, etc.).

Accordingly, the method of the present invention as applied to detecting side effects of drugs may include a step of obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute an online community at a first time, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories the components including scalar cumulative weights associated with a topic category relating to an increase in interest in the use of particular drugs (e.g. returns of unused prescriptions for particular drugs, off-label beneficial uses, abuse, interactions with other medications, etc.). A further step of the method may be combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints to obtain a first community user fingerprint. Further, the method also include a step of obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute the community at a second time, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories the components including scalar cumulative weights associated with a topic category relating to an increase in interest in the use of particular drugs (or the topic category relating to the side effects of drugs) and a step of combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints obtained at the second time to obtain a second community user fingerprint. The method as applied to detecting drugs may further comprise a step of calculating a mathematical difference between the first community user fingerprint and the second community user fingerprint to detect an increase an increase in interest in the use of particular drugs (or in the number of side effects of drugs).

Again, this method may also be combined with traditional methods of keyword searching. For example, a drug company may estimate the community's interest relating to the drug Vioxx® by limiting the user fingerprints forming a basis of the first and second community user fingerprints to user fingerprints that are based on fingerprints of documents that contain the keyword “Vioxx”.

It may be possible using the method of the present invention relating to the detection of side effects to monitor new side effects in drugs. It may also be possible to identify what those side effects are by identifying the documents, or links in the online community, where the side effects are discussed. This may be accomplished by calculating the mathematical difference by computing a difference vector running from an end of a first vector representing the first community user fingerprint to an end of a second vector representing the second community user fingerprint. Then, finding the specific documents that discuss the returns of unused prescriptions for drugs (or relate to side effects in general) may be accomplished by calculating a mathematical overlap between the difference vector and the vectors of the documents that contributed to the difference vector.

This calculation may be further refined by subtracting the non-varying component. This is achieved by calculating a first mathematical overlap of a document with the first vector (the vector representing the first community user fingerprint). By subtracting a second mathematical overlap of a document with the first vector from the mathematical overlap of a document with the difference vector, a measure of the document's contribution to the difference vector may be calculated.

A similar method may be used for detecting an upsurge in side effects of a drug where the topic category relates to side effects of drugs in general. The method may include steps of obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute an online community at a first time, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories the components including scalar cumulative weights associated with a topic category relating to reporting side effects of drugs, combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints to obtain a first community user fingerprint, obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute the community at a second time, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories the components including scalar cumulative weights associated with a topic category relating to reporting side effects of drugs, combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints obtained at the second time to obtain a second community user fingerprint, and calculating a mathematical difference between the first community user fingerprint and the second community user fingerprint to detect a change in a number of side effects for drugs reported.

The same methods of calculating the mathematical difference may be employed.

4. Blocking Unwanted Content from the Retrieval of Textual Information

Several applications of the present invention may involve blocking unwanted or objectionable content (“adult” content, to take an example) and/or filtering out documents having objectionable content.

In one case, the present invention can be viewed as a method of re-ranking a list of documents obtained from a search. In the case where the fingerprints of the documents in the list of documents are already known, the method may include a step of identifying a piece of unwanted text, which may be intended to represent what you may consider the opposite of relevant text. For example, one may decide that adult material or an article about Britney Spears is unwanted or objectionable. The next step of this version of the method may involve creating a fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text. This fingerprint may comprise a list of weights associated with particular topic categories in the classification system, each of the weights in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text may represent a degree to which the piece of unwanted text relates to the particular topic category that the weight (in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text) is associated with. The weights in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text may be obtained automatically from a computer program, as described previously.

A further step may include searching the list of documents by comparing the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text with the fingerprint for each document in the list of documents and re-ranking the list of documents based on a degree to which a document in the list has a mathematical overlap with the fingerprint of the piece of unwanted text. In a preferred embodiment, the method may involve re-ranking the list of documents so that documents in the list are given a higher ranking based on a degree to which such document has a lower mathematical overlap with the fingerprint of the piece of unwanted text.

One way of re-ranking the list of documents may be by removing from the list those documents whose fingerprints have a threshold amount of mathematical overlap with the fingerprint of the piece of unwanted text.

Another method may involve locating relevant documents within a universe of documents, the documents of said universe having been classified so that each document in the universe has a fingerprint, the fingerprint comprising a list of weights associated with particular topic categories in a classification system, each of the weights representing a degree to which the document relates to the particular topic category that the weight is associated with, the weights obtained automatically from a computer program. This method may include a step of identifying a piece of unwanted text as before and then creating a fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text, the fingerprint comprising a list of weights associated with particular topic categories in the classification system, each of the weights in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text representing a degree to which the piece of unwanted text relates to the particular topic category that the weight in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text is associated with, the weights in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text obtained automatically from a computer program.

A further step in this version of the method may include creating an anti-fingerprint from the fingerprint by calculating, for each of the weights in the fingerprint, a mathematical inverse of that weight and using that mathematical inverse in place of that weight. If the fingerprint vector has been normalized, the maximum value for the weights in the fingerprint may be one. Accordingly, the mathematical inverse of the weight would mean one minus the weight. Thus a weight of 0.9 would have a mathematical inverse of 0.1 and a weight of 0.8 would have a mathematical inverse of 0.2. It is noted that while mathematical inverse of a number typically means one divided by that number, this is not the meaning here. Rather mathematical inverse refers to a function such that the number and its mathematical inverse together sum up to one or sum up to some maximum value for a particular weight used in the fingerprint vector.

The method may also include a step of searching all or a portion of the universe of documents by comparing the anti-fingerprint with the fingerprint for each document in that all or a portion of the universe of documents. Finally, the method may involve ranking the documents whose fingerprints have a predetermined degree of mathematical overlap with the fingerprint of the piece of unwanted text.

As before with other embodiments, the method involving the anti-fingerprint may also include a step of setting a level of precision for the anti-fingerprint, the level of precision represented by a number of digits contained in classification codes associated with the particular topic categories.

The method may also be expressed a method of re-ranking a list of documents obtained during a search, the documents in the list having been ranked based on a mathematical overlap between a fingerprint of each the documents in the list of documents with a reference fingerprint. In this case, the method may include a step of, identifying a piece of unwanted text and a step of creating a fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text, the fingerprint comprising a list of weights associated with particular topic categories in the classification system, each of the weights in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text representing a degree to which the piece of unwanted text relates to the particular topic category that the weight in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text is associated with, the weights in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text obtained automatically from a computer program. The method would also include a step of creating an anti-fingerprint from the fingerprint by calculating, for each of the weights in the fingerprint, a mathematical inverse of that weight and using that mathematical inverse in place of that weight; a sum of a particular weight and its mathematical inverse equaling a maximum value for the particular weight. Then the method may include steps of creating a revised fingerprint for the documents in the list of documents by subtracting the anti-fingerprint from the fingerprint of each document in the list; and re-ranking the documents in the list of documents.

The method may also be expressed as a method of re-ranking a list of documents obtained during a search. This method may include a step of calculating a fingerprint for each document in the list, the fingerprint comprising a list of weights associated with particular topic categories in a classification system, each of the weights in the fingerprint for the document representing a degree to which the document relates to the particular topic category that the weight in the fingerprint for the document is associated with, the weights in the fingerprints for the documents obtained automatically from a computer program. The method may also involve a step of ranking the documents whose fingerprints have a predetermined degree of mathematical overlap with a reference fingerprint. Further, the method may include a step of identifying a piece of unwanted text and a step of creating a fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text, the fingerprint comprising a list of weights associated with particular topic categories in the classification system, each of the weights in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text representing a degree to which the piece of unwanted text relates to the particular topic category that the weight in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text is associated with, the weights in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text obtained automatically from a computer program. Further, the method may include a step of creating an anti-fingerprint from the fingerprint by calculating, for each of the weights in the fingerprint, a mathematical inverse of that weight and using that mathematical inverse in place of that weight; a sum of a particular weight and its mathematical inverse equaling a maximum value for the particular weight and a step of creating a revised fingerprint for the documents in the list of documents by subtracting the anti-fingerprint from the fingerprint of each document in the list and then re-ranking the documents in the list of documents.

Using this method also allows one to filter e-mail containing text. The method includes a step of identifying a piece of unwanted text and a step of creating a fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text, the fingerprint comprising a list of weights associated with particular topic categories in a classification system, each of the weights in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text representing a degree to which the piece of unwanted text relates to the particular topic category that the weight in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text is associated with, the weights in the fingerprint for the piece of unwanted text obtained automatically from a computer program. In addition, the method may include calculating a fingerprint of the text in the e-mail, the fingerprint comprising a list of weights associated with particular topic categories in the classification system, each of the weights in the fingerprint for the text in the e-mail representing a degree to which the text in the e-mail relates to the particular topic category that the weight is associated with, the weights in the fingerprint for the text in the e-mail obtained automatically from a computer program. Further, the method may involve calculating a degree of mathematical overlap between the fingerprint of the piece of unwanted text and the fingerprint of the text of the e-mail. Finally, the method may include a step of blocking a particular e-mail when the degree of mathematical overlap between the fingerprint of the piece of unwanted text and the fingerprint of the text of the particular e-mail reaches a threshold amount.

5. Visual Cues

In each of the above methods of searching text for relevant content described in this patent application, the output of the method may include a list of search results ranked in some manner. The present invention also contemplates displaying the results of the search with visual cues that may correlate with the measure of relevance found during the search.

Visual cues may be applied to all or a portion of text found to be relevant and/or to foreground and/or background of such text. Visual cues may include any of the following examples of visual cues alone or in combination with one another: color, icons, gauges, style or font of text, or other visual cues.

In one illustration, a ranking of search results may have various shades of red or other colors to denote a continuum of relevance within the list of documents or links to documents found in the search. Such search may have used any algorithm to find relevant content in a text such as any of the algorithms described in this patent application.

Accordingly, the present invention may be expressed as a method of displaying results of a search for textual content based on relevance. This method may include a step of obtaining from the search a list of documents each of which has associated with it a measure of relevance. Further, the method may include a step of defining a hierarchy of visual cues. One example of this would be different shades wherein darker shades indicate greater relevance. A further step may involve assigning visual cues to the documents in the list based on a linkage of the hierarchy of the relevance of the documents in the list to the hierarchy of the visual cues. This may involve assigning to the more relevant documents the necessary codes that allow such text to be darker when displayed. Finally, the method may include actually displaying to a user the list of documents having the visual cues in them. The visual cues may include, alone or in combination, color, font, style of text, presence of icons associated with particular text, presence of background color and presence foreground color.

It is to be understood that while the method of this invention have been described and illustrated in detail, the above-described embodiments are simply illustrative of the principles of the invention. It is to be understood also that various other modifications and changes may be devised by those skilled in the art which will embody the principles of the invention and fall within the spirit and scope thereof. It is not desired to limit the invention to the exact construction and operation shown and described. The spirit and scope of this invention are limited only by the spirit and scope of the following claims. 

1. A method of measuring changes in interest of a community of users, comprising: obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute the community at a first time, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories; combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints to obtain a first community user fingerprint; obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute the community at a second time, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories; combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints obtained at the second time to obtain a second community user fingerprint; and calculating a mathematical difference between the first community user fingerprint and the second community user fingerprint.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute the community at a third time and at subsequent times, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories; combining the user fingerprints obtained at the third time to obtain a third community user fingerprint and combining the user fingerprints obtained at subsequent times to obtain subsequent community user fingerprints; and calculating a community interest over time.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the user fingerprints are combined by weighting users equally.
 4. The method of claim 1, further comprising combining the user fingerprints to create first and second community user fingerprints by weighting the users by a number of searches conducted by the user.
 5. The method of claim 1, further comprising combining the user fingerprints to create first and second community user fingerprints by weighting the users by a number of links obtained during searches conducted by the user.
 6. The method of claim 1, further comprising calculating the mathematical difference by subtracting the first community user fingerprint from the second community user fingerprint to obtain a vector.
 7. The method of claim 1, further comprising calculating the mathematical difference by using a distance formula for high dimensional space to measure a distance between an end of a first vector representing the first community user fingerprint and an end of a second vector representing the second community user fingerprint to obtain a scalar number.
 8. The method of claim 1, further comprising calculating the mathematical difference by computing a difference vector running from an end of a first vector representing the first community user fingerprint to an end of a second vector representing the second community user fingerprint.
 9. The method of claim 1, further comprising normalizing a vector representing a first or a second community user fingerprint by dividing each scalar cumulative weight in the vector by the square root of the sum of the squares of the scalar cumulative weight in the vector.
 10. The method of claim 1, further comprising notifying an advertiser automatically when the mathematical difference reaches a threshold amount.
 11. A method of detecting an upsurge in side effects of a drug, comprising: obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute an online community at a first time, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories the components including scalar cumulative weights associated with a topic category relating to an increase in interest in use of particular drugs; combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints to obtain a first community user fingerprint; obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute the community at a second time, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories the components including scalar cumulative weights associated with a topic category relating to an increase in interest in use of particular drugs; combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints obtained at the second time to obtain a second community user fingerprint; and calculating a mathematical difference between the first community user fingerprint and the second community user fingerprint to detect an increase in interest in use of particular drugs.
 12. The method of claim 11, further comprising limiting the user fingerprints forming a basis of the first and second community user fingerprints to user fingerprints that are based on fingerprints of documents, the documents containing a particular keyword.
 13. The method of claim 11, further comprising calculating the mathematical difference by computing a difference vector running from an end of a first vector representing the first community user fingerprint to an end of a second vector representing the second community user fingerprint.
 14. The method of claim 13, further comprising finding the specific documents that discuss the returns of unused prescriptions for drugs by calculating a mathematical overlap between the difference vector and the vectors of the documents that contributed to the difference vector.
 15. A method of detecting an upsurge in side effects of a drug, comprising: obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute an online community at a first time, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories the components including scalar cumulative weights associated with a topic category relating to reporting side effects of drugs; combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints to obtain a first community user fingerprint; obtaining user fingerprints of users that constitute the community at a second time, the user fingerprints comprising vectors whose components are scalar cumulative weights associated with topic categories the components including scalar cumulative weights associated with a topic category relating to reporting side effects of drugs; combining the vectors that comprise the user fingerprints obtained at the second time to obtain a second community user fingerprint; and calculating a mathematical difference between the first community user fingerprint and the second community user fingerprint to detect a change in a number of side effects for drugs reported.
 16. The method of claim 15, further comprising limiting the user fingerprints forming a basis of the first and second community user fingerprints to user fingerprints that are based on fingerprints of documents, the documents containing a particular keyword identifying the drug.
 17. The method of claim 15, further comprising calculating the mathematical difference by computing a difference vector running from an end of a first vector representing the first community user fingerprint to an end of a second vector representing the second community user fingerprint.
 18. The method of claim 17, further comprising finding the specific documents that discuss the side effects of drugs by calculating a mathematical overlap between the difference vector and the vectors of the documents that contributed to the difference vector. 